On 20 May, a small group of biologists and chemists arrived at
Cern for a workshop from the institution's experts on how to
organise a disparate community of research groups all over the
world into a single scientific force. While much of the research at
Cern is focused on the beginnings of the Universe, the delegates
also held a discussion on the beginnings of life.

Much of the research in the field is currently focused on
so-called "autocatalytic
sets". These are groups of molecules that undergo reactions
where all molecules mutually catalyse each other -- speed up the
rate at which the reaction takes place. In this way, the sets are
self-sustaining. It's believed that protocells emerged from such a
system, but there's a significant question mark over how likely it
is for these sets to occur randomly.

Little mathematical analysis has been done, but Wim Hordijk, a
computational and bioinformatics specialist at the University of
Lausanne in Switzerland, has begun to put together computer models
to explore the possibilities that an autocatalytic set could
emerge. Such an experiment requires significant computing power,
however. Hordijk told
ISGTW: "So far we have used our own personal computers or
relatively small computer cluster to run our simulations on.
However, we have already run into limitations in terms of available
computing power."

So while at Cern, Hordijk took the opportunity to run the
simulation on the institution's rather-larger computing grid. He
found that, in a situation where the probability of a molecule
being a catalyst for a reaction was two in a million, a set of
65,000 different molecule types will have a high probability of
forming an autocatalytic set. That's a reasonable number for a
chemist to test in a laboratory.

Other
beginnings-of-life scenarios being tested include
self-reproducing RNA, theories on "metabolism first" processes, and
self-reproducing lopsomes, where lipid molecules align to make a
membrane. All require significant computing power, but the workshop
explored several different ways of obtaining that power -- grid
infrastructures, single supercomputers, clouds, and volunteer
computing.

Stuart
Kauffman, who co-organised the workshop, said: "Our group of
seven origin of life workers, representing an initial group of 22
of the top researchers in the field, were truly thrilled by our
Cern meeting. If Cern wishes it, we hope to become a small part of
the Cern world, for the origin of life is itself a problem in
physics. New science can arise in unexpected ways."